finished the second Buddy AI sprint: a step towards having companion AI that will intelligently follow and assist the player in combat

Engine

refined the handling of GPU crashes and proper reporting via the Public Crash Handler

worked on performance analysis and engine optimisations for 3.0

started to work on was a new roads system and toolset to work in conjunction with the planetary terrain

Level Design

making a pass on the room system for Levski to ensure the player won't suffocate in random places

performed general polish and bug fixes for 3.0.

started taking a look at the Lorville: the next flagship landing zone

QA

handled multiple test requests from the Engine Team including a change to the Entity Component Update Scheduler

handled test request for area optimisations: improvements to door and elevator code

continued to support Subsumption and Subsumption tools testing

performance testing is underway for the PU

testing various gravity conditions on the new moons

System Design

experimenting with Levski having a full AI population and tweaking behaviours to avoid overcrowding areas

stress testing servers to determine the AI populations that can be supported without degrading performance

Cinematics

continued to work on scenes across all chapters of Squadron 42

continued work on the two dimensional render-to-texture display screen and holographic volume rendering

Lighting

focused solely on applying some of the final touches for 3.0: colour grading for moons, integrating outposts and moon lighting, Levski bug fixes and polish

Environment

polishing and bug fixing existing content for the PU

added new areas and locations to Levski, a new shop and an admin office and performed a final pass on garages

Started post-3.0 R&D: ArcCorp, procedural cities and the planet Hurston

Behind the Scenes: Kiosks and Commodities

The kiosk is an important step in allowing players to buy and sell goods and commodities in game.

Not only does the kiosk support buying and selling, but placement of cargo within ships and is the foundation for interaction with future panels such as elevators, doors, etc.

With the kiosks you'll be able to sort, filter and compare within the interface and choose where you want the items to go. It could be either to your character, your ships cargo, or a designated area.

The kiosk is what most players will see, but underneath the kiosk is an array of systems unified together in order to bring the first stages of the economy to life by having price, quantity, location all have an effect on the global economy that can be manipulated by players in real time.

Factories, shops and more all have needs that players can meet or affect depending on their goal. A trader can bring supplies desperately needed by a factory producing a certain weapon or players could pillage the supply chain in order to drive prices even further up.

The kiosk also expands player persistence to not only what's on them, but their ships as well. Players will be able to store items on their ship and have them remain there the next time they log in.

The kiosks won't all look the same as they've designed the UI and console to be modular to allow the many shops and manufacturers in the game to have their own look and feel with some UIs being either basic or advanced.

With 3.0 players will start to get a good feel at how Star Citizen as it's been talked about in the past, is now becoming playable in front of their eyes.

The consummate English gentleman, Shiver Bathory can be found posting news to The Relay, when not making puns that is.When not typing furiously at his keyboard he enjoys hanging in chat with The Relay community and every once in awhile can be found playing some game or another. Every Wednesday on The Base he hosts Dead Air - An alternative and extreme metal music show